“The Day They Almost Killed Me”

Follow

( 0 Followers )

X

Follow

E-mail : *

Follow Unfollow

Stranger than fiction. Yet it is true. Not a laffing matter at all, at all. The story is bound to drop an anchor in the memory of whoever reads it. But, as usual, to suit the house style of OPILOGUE, it has to be presented the OPILOGUE way because even in a drama of pain the playwright has the poetic licence to create occasional interludes of happiness to calm down nerves.
So how are you going to present it in such a way that you will not inject your, at times, graveyard humour that will reduce the intensity of the narrative from the sublime to the ridiculous?
Thank you for stylishly telling me that “everyday no be Xmas”. I’ll see reason with you. I will abide by your unwritten guideline. So, help me God. I will allow you to hear the story from the horse’s mouth.
Come, Sebi you just assured us there won’t be room for unnecessary jokes and banters as you normally do, so why are you bringing in a HORSE to tell a human story to humans and not its own colleagues, ANIMALS.?
Well, I’m not the one trying to reduce a gory story, or what looks like it, with inclusion of irrelevant laughter lines. Because of malice aforethought by your likes, it is the MAN himself that will tell his story not a HORSE as you erroneously thought. Not in my own character. Are we set?
O ya, o ya SPOKE on. Let’s hear and feel the gbas-gbos of your peculiar story.
“My name is Dr. Ademola Onifade. I would like everyone to read this message to the very end and learn from the nasty and highly disturbing experience I had on Saturday and Sunday 26th and 27th October 2024, respectfully.
I left Lagos for Osun State with my driver driving on Wednesday 23rd October 2024. We slept in Osogbo that night before we proceeded to IGBAJO the following day to prepare for my club meeting, which I hosted on Saturday, 26th, October 2024. This my driver resumed work with me on the 10th October 2024, just about 16 days before this nasty experience. Two to three days after resuming work, I noticed some unusual and irrational behaviour in him, like always talking to himself, argumentative and resisting advice and correction. I reported him to the person that introduced him to me and the person said he would speak with him to change his attitude. He said I should please try to be patient with him, that he would change. I therefore continued to tolerate and manage him. But certainly, I knew that he was hiding some of his habits from me.
The night of the club’s meeting, I had a member of the club who attended the meeting and also decided to stay the night in my house. There were three of us who slept in the main building and in different rooms. The security guard was in the gate house. In the middle of the night, around 12.30 – 1.00am, we suddenly heard someone shouting and banging the doors to my room and my guest’s. We opened our doors and saw that it was my driver. He was shouting and saying that some people wanted to kill him. He said he wanted to leave the house to head for Lagos. We said there was no way he could leave the house at that time of the night, more so, he has not been to Osun before. We told him to calm down and should go back to sleep. We locked the main door to the house with additional lock so that he wouldn’t sneak out. He went into his room, and I went back into our own rooms.
At around 3.30- 4.00 am, I started hearing shouts outside the house at the extreme end of the large compound. I went to my guest’s room to alert him. We both came out of the house and went to the security guard. We were wondering how he was able to get out of the house since the main door was locked. We now went to his room and discovered that he had destroyed the window netting. But since there was iron burglary proof, he couldn’t get out from the window. He then broke the asbestos ceiling and roof of his room to get out of the house.
My guest and the security guard went to talk with him to come out of the bush. I’m sure he never knew that the whole expanse of the compound was fenced round that it was impossible for him to get out. When eventually he got out of the bush, he said he was arrested by some soldiers who didn’t allow him to escape. THERE WERE NO SOLDIERS AROUND. He was still saying he wanted to go and see his parents in Lagos. The time now was about 5 am. We told him to wait till daybreak and we would head for Lagos.
Certainly, with this kind of glaring psychotic behaviour, I would not allow him to drive me back to Lagos. So, I arranged for another driver in Igbajo to drive us back to Lagos. Three of us, the new driver, THIS IRRATIONAL BOY and myself left for Lagos at about 8.00am. We left my guest in Igbajo. My intention was that immediately we get to Lagos we would drive straight to where he lives with his parents and hand him over to his parents. The new driver was driving, he was sitting in front seat with the driver, and I sat at the back. When we got to IKIRUN there was a little traffic holdup in front of Akirun’s palace, he just jumped out suddenly out of the vehicle and started running and shouting THAT WE WANTED TO GO AND KILL HIM…”
Oro di hun. Oro pesije. Oro di hun!
“I told the driver to park and run after him. How would I have explained if I didn’t get him back to Lagos? The driver eventually caught up with him, but he was saying and shouting that we wanted to kill him got the attention of people and crowd gathered around them. They had even started beating the innocent driver and he told the mob that his Oga (that’s me), was around the car on the Main Street…”
Wahala. Wahala dey!
“Some hungry and angry looking boys came to where I was standing and took me to where they had already started to molest the new driver. When I got there, a large mob had gathered and I could hear some of the boys saying that they should kill us (the new driver and myself), because of the erroneous impression the psychotic driver had given…”
Ori yeye ni mogun…
“If not for the intervention of one elderly man who restrained the mob we would have been lynched. The elderly man organised for the police to be called in. But for the timely arrival of the policemen maybe I wouldn’t be alive today to write this story…”
Rere run, rere run, police station ya o…
“The policemen took all of us plus three or four members of the mob to the police station in Ikirun. We got to the police station around 10.30am. We were interrogated and our statements were taken. From the interrogations the policemen could see that certainly something was wrong with the psychotic driver. He was asked to give the contact telephone numbers of his relatives. The police were able to contact his father who was in Lagos, and he was told to come to Ikirun police station to see his son. The father and the junior brother left Lagos around 12 noon, but they didn’t get to Ikirun police station until about 8.30pm. The police interrogated the father and confirmed that he has been noticing such irrational behaviour in his son for some time now. He said that, apart from the fact that his son consumes a lot of alcohol, he is almost sure that he consumes other narcotics substances. A statement in writing was also taken from the father. The police then released the boy to his father and brother around 10pm. My driver and I were also allowed to go at the same time. The father of the psychotic driver apologized to me profusely…”
THE EPILOGUE
“The moral lesson of this my experience is that, in these trying times in Nigeria today many of our youths are on hard drugs. These hard drugs cause psychiatric problems like HALLUCINATIONS which I think my driver had. They can also cause DEPRESSION, ANXCIETY, NEUROSIS, LACK OF SLEEP, TALKING TO ONESELF, BEING ARGUMENTATIVE, AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR AND EVEN SUICIDE TENDENCIES…”
Some Guidance Counselling as take-away?
‘Before we employ any staff, be it driver, house help, security guard and, in fact, all staff, proper profiling should be carried out. To God be all the glory”
Alleluyah! Ogooooo!!!